Death Where the Bad Rocks Live (26 page)

Willie sighed and held the door for Clara and Manny. “I can hardly wait.”

Clara ran red-faced from the bedroom, tossing her scarf off as she dropped into the couch in the living room. Manny followed her and started sitting beside her, but her scowl warned him away and he pulled up an occasional chair. “I can’t help it. My ribs are killing me.”

“You heard the doctor: You’ll be able to do anything you did before. At least what I remember what you did before, once when you had an attack of romance.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Then get some more Viagra or something.” Clara shook her head. “Maybe this was a mistake, you moving in with me. I’ve known women before that had a spectacular love life until they got married or had their boyfriend move in, then it petered off. Forgive the pun.”

Manny scooted the chair closer and put his hand on Clara’s arm. She jerked it away and turned her head to avoid looking at him. “I got other problems.” Sometime ago, he’d decided to tell Clara about his checkup, how he had been diagnosed with
diabetes. He had hoped to be able to put it off, but knew he must say something to salvage their relationship. “I’ve been diagnosed with Type II diabetes.”

Clara looked back over her shoulder. “So you said before. That’s what your doctor keeps calling about. When did you find out?”

“Last month, though the doctor said it’s been developing for some time.”

Her look softened and she inched closer to Manny. “How’d you find out?”

“The yearly exam the bureau requires of us. Besides, I was experiencing terrible numbness in my legs and feet.”

“Your Uncle Marion had numbness, didn’t he?”

Manny nodded. “About thirty years sooner than he should have. But not before they amputated both legs and made him sit in a wheelchair looking at rabbit ears that barely received one channel.” Unc had vegetated in the nursing home in Rapid City. Manny made it a point to fly back from D.C. every other month. But each time, Unc slipped further and further until he wished to fly to the Spirit World. Manny’s big regret was that he was off on another reservation case when Unc’s time came.
No man should have to die alone
, Unc had often told him.

Clara turned to him and patted the couch. Manny sat beside her, and she hugged him. “What kind of medication does the doctor have you on?”

“I’m not on medication.”

“But you just said…”

“I want to get a second opinion before I commit to shots, if that’s what it’ll take.”

Clara’s face became red once again, and her brows came together in what Manny had come to recognize as a pre-tongue-lashing. “Your doctor diagnosed you with diabetes a month ago and you haven’t seen him since? What kind of
bonehead maneuver is that? Why haven’t you talked to another doctor?”

“No time.”

“No time? I’ve been nonexistent in your life for months now, and there might be a way to fix it? Might be a way to give you back some of your libido? Remember what that was, back when you came home all horned up?”

Manny dropped his eyes. “I’ll make an appointment next week.”

“You’ll make an appointment tomorrow unless you want to be bunking with Willie.”

“I’ll make the appointment tomorrow.” The last thing he wanted was to babysit Willie and his problems. He had his own right this minute.

Janet started to slide into the booth next to Willie at Big Bat’s. She frowned as he got up and moved across from her next to Manny. Philbilly came over to their table carrying three sodas, one spilling onto his forearm and onto the floor. He set the sodas down and rubbed the soda into the floor with his foot.

“Thought you were quitting, Phil?” Phil Ostert had lived on Pine Ridge since his folks had abandoned him in his teens. Legend around the rez was that his folks pulled up to Big Bat’s to fuel as they were passing through on their way back home from working lettuce fields in Oregon. When teenager Phil went to use the bathroom, they’d seen their chance and skied off. Even Phil didn’t know much about his past, other than he was a hillbilly from Arkansas. And acted like it. Manny had run out of fingers long ago counting the one- and two-week jobs Phil had quit when he thought he was being slighted. Manny always suspected the jobs lasted just long enough for Phil to get his fill of sweating and he’d quit. “Thought you were fed up with working here?”

Philbilly squatted beside the table and lowered his voice. “They did me wrong two days ago.”

“Now what’d they do to you?”

“They made me help the women unload a semi of frozen chicken patties and corn dogs.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

Philbilly choked. “I was hired as part-time cook. Unloading trucks ain’t in my job description.”

Willie looked after Philbilly disappearing through the kitchen doors. “If Philbilly got any dumber, we’d have to water him.”

Manny agreed, and he turned to Janet. “Tell me what Marshal Ten Bears said yesterday.”

Janet fished in her purse for a spiral notebook. “Marshal hires himself out as a hunting guide in the winter months. Deer. Coyotes. Mountain lion if the customer has enough lucky bucks. For Marshal to take you somewhere, you got to have the cash. Swears he claims it on his income tax every year”—she shrugged—“but he’s a little bit shady.”

“In your vast experience?”

She glared at Willie. “Intuition.”

Manny elbowed Willie, and he let it drop. “We knew he was a guide of sorts, but what’s he do in the off-season?”

“Firewood,” Willie said. “Sixty-five a cord, stacked and delivered. He went out of his way to tell me it’s just a summer hobby. Says he makes more than enough guiding hunters; he doesn’t have to do much in the summer unless he wants to.”

“And did he give a sample for DNA?”

“He didn’t want to.” Janet smiled at Willie and made a point to bat her eyes. “It took some persuasion but we got it.”

“You?”

Janet nodded.

“Good job, huh Willie?”

“Wasn’t the easiest thing for Janet to do—persuade Marshal.
But I think they got something straight between them that convinced him.”

Janet swung at Willie’s head but he pulled back before she could draw blood.

“What? I didn’t know what you two were doing when you went back inside the cabin.”

“Well, we didn’t do what you think we did while you were roaming around outside.”

“What
did
you do while Janet was doing her…convincing?”

Willie sipped his soda. “I walked around the cabin. Saw where Marshal’s been using worn deer trails to get places in the Stronghold.”

Manny recalled his days with Unc, when they would travel the game trails interfingered with washout gullies to get around that nearly impassable part of the Badlands. He imagined Marshal shared that same innate knowledge of the area with Uncle Marion.

“On one side of his cabin Marshal had a porcupine hide stretched and drying. With one very small caliber hole that I almost missed spotting. And hanging beside the porcupine was what would have been a nice mountain lion pelt if it had been killed in the winter. Thing was mangy. You know how they get in the summer when they’re not haired-up.”

Manny nodded.

“That’s one of Marshal’s side businesses—supplying porcupine quills to local artists. Sells some to the Prairie Edge in Rapid,” Willie added.

“Quilling is something Oglala women do.” Willie leaned across the table and smiled at Janet, drawing out his words, accentuating his condescending tone. “They’re involved in traditional things, like quilling and beading. They don’t go off on some tangent, wanting to be a criminal investigator.”

“I had a belly full of traditional crafts when I was in school.
They were boring as they are now.” Janet’s face reddened, and her jaw tightened, then she relaxed and flashed a toothy grin that showed off her dimples. “Now I like things that excite me more.”

“Does Marshal think the body in the car is his grandfather?” Manny said quickly to diffuse the looming storm at the booth.

“He’s hoping it’s not.” Janet turned to Manny. “He’s made something of a living being the grandson of Moses Ten Bears. People are anxious to buy porcupine quills, take guided tours of the Badlands, book game hunts from the grandson of a genuine Oglala holy man. He’s even sold photos of himself for five bucks to tourists wanting a photo with Moses’s grandson.”

“Marshal will stand to lose a lot of that business if it is Moses,” Willie said. “It’s more profitable to continue the legend that
Wakan Tanka
took Moses Ten Bears one night when he prayed to the four winds in the Stronghold instead of him dying liquored-up in a car with some White dude and getting bombed to death.”

“And just where is the DNA sample?”

“Pee Pee is overnighting it to Quantico.” Willie finished his soda and started toward the soda machine for a refill. “Along with two molars from that bigger corpse we think is Moses,” he called over his shoulder.

“Still doesn’t answer what he’s doing at his cabin this time of year. The porcupine quill business doesn’t warrant staying all the way out there.”

“Herbs.”

Manny wiped soda from his lips. “Herbs, like for cooking?”

Willie shook his head and played stare-down with Janet, who sat unblinking across the table. “Ceremonial. He dabbles at being a sacred man like his grandfather.”

“Someone teach him, like you’re learning from Margaret Catches?”

“It’s not polite to ask a sacred man where he gets his powers.” Janet smiled at Willie. “I do know some traditional things.”

Willie ignored her and slid back in the booth. “Every sacred person has a favorite spot to gather herbs he or she uses in their ceremonies. Mine, I go to a special bank of the Cheyenne River and pick them. It’s like they wait for me every year. Marshal picks his
peji hota
—his sage—close to the cabin. One of the things I was doing outside while my partner was busy doing her thing inside with Marshal.”

Janet slid from the booth and went to the soda machine for a refill.

Willie nodded in her direction. “She’s driving me nuts.”

“I would be nuts, too, if those long bedroom eyelashes were constantly batting at me. She bats them any more and she’ll start hovering.”

Willie leaned closer and lowered his voice. “If Doreen sees us together, it’ll be the end gate for us.”

“Thought it already was.”

“She gave me one last chance. Just keep me and Janet separated.”

“I’ll do what I can.”

Janet returned to the booth, her smiling eyes locked on Willie with lashes long enough she could almost hide those eyes. She started to speak, but Manny interrupted her. “Tell me about Marshal’s cabin. I understand it’s untouched since Moses lived there.”

“That’s one of the reasons the Cultural Committee wanted Marshal to move it so bad—it’s just how Moses left it the day he went into the Stronghold and fell from that cliff.”

“Or got himself bombed in that car.” Manny watched out the window as a rez rod pulled up to the gas pumps. An old
man stumbled out, put two dollars of fuel in. He rolled a smoke and lit it, tossing the match on the ground beside the pump before coaxing his car onto the street amid billowing smoke.

“People in the tribe believe the cabin where Moses lived is sacred, but I don’t buy it,” Janet said.

“Of course it’s
wakan
.” Willie brushed his drink glass with his arm, but he snatched it before it toppled over. “Moses Ten Bears was one of the great Oglala sacred men, and not just of this century. He’s talked about like those sacred men we Lakota had even before the time of winter counts.”

“But Marshal won’t let the tribe move the cabin into Pine Ridge for display. Does he want money for it?”

Willie shook his head. “As important as the almighty dollar is to him, he’d never take even a dime for it. I think he gets more mileage with the cabin during his tourist and hunting business. It adds to the persona of Marshal Ten Bears—grandson of Moses.”

“He’s stupid stubborn,” Janet said, back at Willie. “Like someone else. It would be a good thing for our people to have the cabin moved to a place people—and historians—could look at it. Though I don’t buy it, it’s significant in that it’d make people come and visit and leave wondering how Moses could live in a one-room shack like a pauper when he could have sold his paintings for tons of money.”